When I was looking at medical schools, I knew the University of Pittsburgh had an excellent reputation, but I didn’t appreciate fully UPMC’s stature as a research center. There’s a lot of opportunity to do research on almost any medical topic imaginable. Once I started rotations, I realized that I will have seen more transplant care in my four years as a medical student than most of the doctors I’ll someday work alongside. When it comes to patients, basically anything you want to see you can see. Before you start medical school, you don’t know enough medicine to understand what an amazing resource of knowledge and discovery is going on all around you here.
I remember seeing a young patient with Prader-Willi Syndrome which is a very rare genetic disorder that affects about 1 in 15,000 kids. These kids suffer from acute hyperphagia—they can’t stop eating and it’s tragic. I was amazed to learn that Pittsburgh is a major center for treatment. We got to interview a group of patients during that rotation and had the chance to do research in that area, if it interested us.
